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If you had hopped on a plane in London last summer and flown to Minneapolis, Minnesota and then drove a few hours southwest from there into the heart of the most intensive neonic treated monocultures of corn and soybeans imaginable, how many bumblebees, honeybees and butterflies do you think you would you see along the crop field margins? Here is what you would see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZCOJnJU1UE

This video does show a nice strip of flowering plants with pollinators.
But it doesn't tell you how long the field next to it has been treated with neonics.
This might well be the first year, so you would find all the bumbles still around.

Come back in a year or two and compare, you will be very lucky to see the same amount of wildlife.

Anybody can go out and visit field margins in areas that have had neonics applied for a few years, they will be very poor indeed.

Go and check it for yourself, don't just believe what is said on this forum!

Go and check it for yourself, don't just believe what is said on this forum!

from bee-l about Mr White and his promotion of his agenda.

Well-meaning exaggeration is common. The Guardian, a pro-environ*ment British newspaper, mangled my parliamentary evidence on moths and beetles to claim that three-quarters of all UK pollinator species, including bees, were in severe decline.

It is orchestrated, Jerry. There are a couple of beekeepers in the UK who look for any study that can be used to promote an agenda against pesticides, then build up a story to feed to newspapers, and circulate them as widely as they can elsewhere. They have no interest in the real position but simply wish to raise worries about pesticides. I know that with certainty because I have challenged one of them on several occasions on UK beekeeping fora to debate the issue and he just disappears, sometimes after issuing insults. In the meantime one of the leading UK newspapers takes the story and the twisted message gets relayed to the public. In recent weeks this story and the one on multiple routes for clothianidin exposure have been misrepresented

Take a look at the last sentence in that message forwarded by Ghislain:

'NB Bayer, Syngenta and their associates are busily savaging the latest scientific report from Harvard.'

He means, in addition to a few others, the people who posted here recently on the Harvard paper. Allen, Dean, Randy, Bill, and all the others, you are now 'associates' of agrochemical companies because you criticised the Harvard junk science. The Bee-L discussions were pointed out to the author of that circular when he posted in various places celebrating the Harvard study as yet more proof of the evils of neonicotinoids, so he knows about your posts. You argue for rational thought, and you get called an associate of an agrochemical company.

This message came from Graham White, a one-man propaganda machine based in the Scottish borders. His posts are all over the internet now, often under the name of Borderbeeman and in some newspaper websites as Borderglider. This Dutch video he is now promoting is a nasty piece of work which, in soft tones, does a one-sided hatchet job on Dutch scientists trying to find the truth in all this morass of propaganda and poor science.

Mr White in his circular even implies that the scientist being criticised in the videos takes research money from Bayer. That is a lie. The TV programme makes it plain that the organisation to which he belongs (it employs hundreds of people particularly in areas such as plant genetics and biotechnology) has dealings with Bayer, not Dr Blancquiere himself. The only scientist in the video who - to my knowledge - has had research money from Bayer is the French scientist Dr Bonmatin. He is the one who 'found' effects at very low levels of imidacloprid when all other studies were saying that such levels were safe, and so he fell out with his funders.

If anyone reading this has any trouble believing how twisted and unreliable the programme is, see the repeating of the scandalous comments made about Jerry Bromenshenk in the third video at 10 min 28 secs. I hope that you have your lawyers at the ready Jerry.

Beekeepers have every right to be suspicious of the agrochemical industry. In the Netherlands in particular there seem to be problems of widespread environmental pollution caused by over-use of these pesticides. But videos like this are nasty character assassinations of people who will not compromise their scientific integrity, and it is an unpleasant thing to see.

Nice bit of detective work Mike. It confirms what many of us suspected. These folks aren't here for a rational discussion but instead to promote an agenda through whatever means possible. The irony is, I believe, the unfairness will just backfire on them since there should always be caution and concern about chemical use. This stuff only confuses the issue.

"People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe."- Andy Rooney

I'm running about 50% loss in one nuc yard. Still not sure what the cause is. But it is not within 3 miles of any neonics, has great flora around, and has been a great yard in the past. I suspect ppb is much of the problem. I didn't treat any of these nucs for mites [didn't even sample them] and many got very strong. I believe the mites built up more than usual and there are probably virus issues as well. My other nuc yard is doing well and is similar, so go figure. I haven't been able to pull the deadouts from the yard since it's about 1/4 mile through some deep snow to it. I sent some of the bees to Beltsville for them to check. Be interesting to see what they find.

thanks mike ! Lobbyist was the first thing that came to mind when reading the first two paragraphs of that story. They try hiding themselves behind other stories but their writing formula still remains.

Neonicotinoids are not used where I keep my bees, and with the exception of one small nuc which died of isloation starvation I have never lost a single colony during autumn, spring or winter, if a queen fails I unite with a nuc.

The few losses I have had were swarms where the queen failed to mate or due to queens that became drone layers at old age.

Bees without pesticide challenge need very little looking after (mainly food, varroa control, swarm control), there is no reason why they should dwindle away to nothing.

You know when i first read this I got pretty ticked that this type of stuff would be allowed on this site. I had hoped that the moderators would delete and ban those that are trying to do this stuff, after all one little reference to sarcasm will got you a slap on the wrist....... but i am at least pleased that almost everybody here is now seeing thru this stuff...... It is actually refereshing to see so many standing up and saying hey, my bees are in this and are fine....... maybe we need to keep looking........

I'm running about 50% loss in one nuc yard. Still not sure what the cause is. But it is not within 3 miles of any neonics, has great flora around, and has been a great yard in the past. I suspect ppb is much of the problem. I didn't treat any of these nucs for mites [didn't even sample them] and many got very strong. I believe the mites built up more than usual and there are probably virus issues as well. My other nuc yard is doing well and is similar, so go figure. I haven't been able to pull the deadouts from the yard since it's about 1/4 mile through some deep snow to it. I sent some of the bees to Beltsville for them to check. Be interesting to see what they find.

Cam - I know for us in the past we have seen some our Grade one yards, ones that really thrived during the season, be the yards that suffered higher winter losses. We deduce among other things, more bees, more mites, more interaction with other bees afield, more virus, more bees, higher use of stores. I'd be interested to hear what you find? We had one really great yard we no longer use to winter because we realized it was a cold air drain and in an area very near the Catherine Welands south of Seneca Lake. That yard consistently had high losses due to moisture and cold. Have you considered this?

Really? You state that with a high degree of certainty. Homeowners cannot purchase and use formulations of neonicotinoids there? Systemic formulations for pets are not available where you are (think of it: a pet owner puts a "top spot" neonicotinoid treatment on his dog, the insecticide is systemic in the dog, the dog urinates on some sod, the neonicotinoid in the dog urine is taken up by a flower in the sod, the neonicotinoid becomes systemic in the flower, a bee visits that flower to collect pollen and/or nectar ... you get the idea)?

For me, it's difficult to picture a place in industrially- and agriculturally-intensive areas that would truly be isolated from neonicotinoid use.

Bees without pesticide challenge need very little looking after (mainly food, varroa control, swarm control), there is no reason why they should dwindle away to nothing. -stromnessbees

This statement really stuck in my mind. I keep bees in an area with heavy agricultural neonicotinoid use. I feed only in extreme circumstances, I have not used any treatments for Varroa for a number of years, and I still have not experienced the "dwindling" that is often presented as an effect of neonicotinoid exposure (the "cause"). The care I devote to hives is related more to population management issues (i. e., making the hive appropriately sized for the number of bees in it) and honey or food stores management, especially for overwintering.

What sort of care do pesticide-exposed bees require that bees not exposed to pesticides do not need?

What Stromness failed to mention is that there is no varroa in her area either as Orkney is a varroa free zone.
Leaving aside the neonicotinoids, beekeeping is a lot easier without mites and their viruses.

The bee-farmer in question has lost 2,150 hives, and has managed to salvage and re-combine from 2- 6 remnant hives into one decent sized one; by doing this he has cobbled together roughly 900 hives - with which he is trying to fulfill his remaining almond pollination contracts.

I suspect he has a few other things on his mind right now - like financial survival - as opposed to organising pollen samples to be taken from his dead hives. I have no experience of what a migratory bee-farmer has to do at almond pollination time, but I would assume he is working 12-16 hour days and not getting much time to think about anything else.

Ummmm.....so you don't even know where this came from? You claim to have edited the copy from the beekeeper, but you don't even know who it is?

deknow

Where do you get this absurd statement from? I know exactly who the bee-farmer is; he's a personal friend who - for the moment - wishes to remain anonymous. Given the nastiness of the comments from people like you I am beginning to think he made a wise decision.

Degradation and Metabolism (of Clothianidin)
Metabolism in aerobic soil occurred very slowly. At 20°C, clothianidin degraded in two soils
with a first-order half-life of 148 and 239 days (Hofchen and Laacher soil series), in seven soils
ranging in texture from sand to silt loam with half-lives of 495 to 1,155 days (BBA 2.2, Quincy,
Sparta, Crosby, Susan, Elder, and Howe soil series), and in a tenth soil with a half-life that was
nominally calculated to be 6,931 days (Fugay soil series). 6,931 days is 18.98 years. NOTE: this is HALF-LIFE we are talking here! Even if you accept the lowest figure of 495 days - that means that HALF of the insecticide will still remain in the soil two years later; 1/4 would still remain in the soil four years later. If you go with the other figure of 1155 days half life, that is almost four years! So after 8 years, a quarter of the insecticide would still remain in the soil.

NOTE 2: Under European Law it is illegal to license any pesticide that persists in soil for more than 120 days - so how did it ever get a license? Yet again, nobody knows.

The reality of corn farming in the USA is that the same field is being planted with neonic-treated corn, or soya, or cotton year after year after year. So the burden of insecticide persisting in the soil could be truly massive.
If a field is left fallow after a corn crop, it makes no difference - because the wild flowers which follow would still absorb the insecticide systemically, so their flowers in turn become toxic to bees.

From the same document:

"Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis. Although EFED does not conduct … risk assessments on non-target insects, information from standard tests and field studies, as well as incident reports involving other neonicotinoids insecticides (e.g., imidacloprid) suggest the potential for long term toxic risk to honey bees and other beneficial insects."

Last edited by Barry Digman; 02-23-2013 at 09:57 AM.
Reason: Close quote